November 18, 1948: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Your remark that you were sure that I would do an (adult) novel within the next twelve months has caused me considerable thought. Do you really think so? I have long wanted to do bookbound adult novels, preferably of the H. G. Wells sort, but have never tackled anything but pulp serials and these boys’ books for Scribner’s. Do you think I should take time off…and make a real try at cracking the adult book market? If so, should I drop the speculative stuff and try a contemporary novel-or should I stick to my specialty?
January 28, 1949: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
…In the meantime, I am collecting notes on (Forgive me!) the Great American Novel. Yup, Lurton, I have fallen ill of the desire to turn out a “literary” job. Specifically, I would like to do a job somewhat like Ayn Rand did in The Fountainhead, but with modern art, especially pictorial art, as my target. It may be a year or two before I feel ready to tackle it, but I am working on it.
The first draft of the boys’ novel [Red Planet] for Scribner’s was finished at 11 P.M. last Monday. I have taken three days off to attend to chores and correspondence and intend to start revising tomorrow. The finished manuscript should be in your hands within a fortnight.
October 1, 1949: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I have two short stories that I am very hot to do, one a bobby-sox for Calling All Girls and one a sci-fi short which will probably sell to slick and is a sure sale for pulp. The first is “Mother and the Balanced Diet,” using the same characters as [in] “Poor Daddy,” as the editors requested. The other is “The Year of the Jackpot” based on cycles theory — 1952, the year that everything happens at once. But gosh knows when I will find time to do them. I probably will, as I want to do them. But I’m working myself nutty. (Oh, yes-I’ve got to prepare some stuff for — too; possible [motion picture] uses for my published stuff.)
About the Boys’ Life job, see above. You’ll get both versions in about a month. We have to move this week; I’ll send you a new address.
HOLLYWOOD WRITING
September 3, 1957: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I want to hold up for a little while in changing Hollywood agents. I still think that MCA is not the place for me to get personal attention but a recent incident makes it polite, at least, to delay: at 1200 26 August, Hal Flanders of Ned Brown’s office phoned me and offered me a Hollywood writing job doing a screen treatment of Herman Wouk’s The Lo-mokome Papers. I turned down the job-I don’t really want to write screen stories of anyone’s work but my own, and this particular story cannot be repaired into an honest science fiction story anyhow; it is a philosophical tract packaged as a fantasy. Furthermore, I hope my decision will not disappoint you when I point out that the source of the work is such that we could hardly expect MCA to split the fee-and I prefer to stay under your management and writing for the New York market rather than become a Hollywood trained seal. In any case, I could not finish the novel, do this job, and sail on 26 November. But I did find the offer pleasing…
November 16, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
There will be a veritable spate of new Heinlein stories before this winter is over. Our bomb shelter is completed and stocked-and the durn thing was enormously more expensive than I had figured on when I started it. Now I have a couple of weeks of chores to clean up, including a big backlog of correspondence, filing, record keeping, etc.; then I shall apply the nose to this grindstone and keep it there all winter.
August 10, 1963: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
This fall I might do about 10,000 words for Boys’ Life (query them if you like), or write the last story of the Future History [see The Past Through Tomorrow in Chapter XI, “Adult Novels”], Da Capo (piles of notes on it but it has never quite jelled) — or possibly a new novel. Or perhaps all three in the order named. But that is a good many weeks away.